VIRGIN GALACTIC'S NEXT SPACE PLANE SHOULD BEGIN TEST FLIGHTS IN 2020 - Virgin Galactic will soon have two space planes plying the sky, if all goes according to plan. The company's newest six-passenger SpaceShipTwo vehicle, known as VSS Unity, is nearly ready to fly tourists to suborbital space and back.
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BIGELOW’S B330 – AN AUTONOMOUS, EXPANDABLE INDEPENDENT EXPLORATION SPACE STATION - While Bigelow Aerospace’s expandable module, BEAM, continues to perform above all expectations while attached to the International Space Station (ISS), the company has larger ambitions for its range of modules, centered around the B330 – a huge inflatable module. The key focus is on attracting NASA to select B330 as a transportation module for long-duration trips to Mars.
Bigelow already has a wealth of experience in space, ranging back to the days of its Genesis modules that tested the technology that has matured into their latest designs. More(Source: NASASpaceFlight.com - Sep 14)

FIRST EARTH OBSERVATION SATELLITE WITH AI READY FOR LAUNCH - A few months from now will see the launch of the first European satellite to demonstrate how onboard artificial intelligence can improve the efficiency of sending Earth observation data back to Earth. Dubbed ɸ-Sat, or PhiSat, this revolutionary artificial intelligence technology will fly on one of the two CubeSats that make up the FSSCat mission—a Copernicus Masters winning idea.
As the overall 2017 Copernicus Masters winner, FSSCat, was proposed by Spain's Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and developed by a consortium of European companies and institutes. More(Source: Phys.org - Sep 13)

SPACEX SAYS IT WILL DEPLOY SATELLITE BROADBAND ACROSS US FASTER THAN EXPECTED - SpaceX says it plans to change its satellite launch strategy in a way that will speed up deployment of its Starlink broadband service and has set a new goal of providing broadband in the Southern United States late next year.
In a filing on August 30, SpaceX asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to "adjust the orbital spacing of its satellites." With this change, each SpaceX launch would deploy satellites in "three different orbital planes" instead of just one, "accelerating the process of deploying satellites covering a wider service area." More(Source: Ars Technica - Sep 13)

GOES-13 GETS DRAFTED? - On the afternoon of Sunday, September 8, 2019, I was leisurely monitoring deep space when I noted an S-band signal that shouldn’t have been where it was if all was normal with the GEO belt world… GOES-15 presently lives at 128W and GOES-17 at 137W, so what was a GOES N,O,P series spacecraft doing in between them? A quick check of Space-Track.org data revealed it was GOES-13. But why was it here and drifting westward? As we will see GOES-13 isn’t lost, it’s just wandering. More(Source: Riddles in the Sky (blog) - Sep 12)

PROJECT OBERON: UK EYES CLUSTER OF MILITARY RADAR SATELLITES - Project Oberon, as it's known, has been in discussion for a while.
It envisages a network of small spacecraft capable of seeing the Earth's surface in all weathers and at night, and at very high resolution.
The satellites would also have sensors to locate the use of radio transmissions.
This is information that can be used in tandem with the radar pictures to better identify targets on the ground and interpret their behaviour. More(Source: BBC News - Sep 12)

BRITISH SATELLITE THREAT FROM NEAR-MISSES WITH CHINA AND RUSSIA - British satellites are being put in danger by near-misses with those operated by the likes of Russia and China, a senior defence official has warned.
Air Vice Marshall Simon Rochelle said "the fight is on" to increase the presence of UK military satellites in space, as it has become a "contested environment" between a number of rival nations. More(Source: Sky News - Sep 12)

REMEMBERING 9/11: NASA ASTRONAUTS PAY TRIBUTE FROM SPACE - On the 18th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, NASA astronauts paid tribute to the heroes who risked their lives to save others on that day by tweeting a special message from space.
"Honoring the brave public servants of @FDNY. Thank you for your service, we remember your fallen comrades," NASA's Expedition 60 astronaut Drew Morgan tweeted from the International Space Station. "Your flag and patch are proudly orbiting the Earth on board the @Space_Station! #NeverForget." More(Source: Space.com - Sep 12)

CHINESE SPACE STATION CORE MODULE PASSES REVIEW BUT FACES DELAYS - The first module for China’s planned space station has passed a final review, but the project continues to suffer launch vehicle-related delays.
The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) announced Sept. 6 that the 20-metric-ton ‘Tianhe’ module design and prototype had passed final reviews Sept. 2. The flight model would be manufactured in the near future. More(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 12)

NASA MISSION SCHEDULED TO BLAST OFF FROM VIRGINIA - NASA has announced plans to launch a rocket from Virginia to the International Space Station next month.
A news release says Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft will take off from Wallops Island as early as the afternoon of Oct. 21. NASA says the goal is to deliver science investigations, supplies and equipment. The mission includes the testing of a vest created to protect astronauts from radiation, a special oven to study baking food in microgravity and a device to explore recycling plastics for a space device. More(Source: Richmond.com - Sep 11)

LAUNCHPAD FIRE FORCES JAPAN TO POSTPONE CARGO SHIP LAUNCH TO SPACE STATION: REPORT - Japan called off a planned cargo ship launch to the International Space Station today (Sept. 10) after a fire erupted on the launch platform for the mission's rocket, according to press reports.
"Today’s launch is postponed because we found a fire around the hole at the deck of the mobile launcher at 3:05 a.m. JST (2:05 p.m. EDT/1805 GMT). Now we are trying to extinguish a fire," representatives with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the rocket's builder, said in a Twitter status update. More(Source: Space.com - Sep 11)

BOEING UNVEILS SMALL GEO PRODUCT AS PART OF NEW 702X SATELLITE LINEUP - Boeing has joined the growing list of manufacturers offering smaller satellites for geostationary orbit, saying new digital payload technology can reduce the weight of its typical communications spacecraft by half.
Boeing’s small GEO satellites will weigh roughly 1,900 kilograms unfueled, relying on reprogrammable, software-defined payloads that are considerably smaller than earlier technologies, Eric Jensen, Boeing’s vice president of global commercial satellite sales, said in an interview. More(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 9)

JAPANESE CARGO SPACECRAFT SET TO BLAST OFF FROM TANEGASHIMA SPACE CENTER BOUND FOR ISS - A Japanese cargo spacecraft loaded with more than four tons of supplies, spare parts and experiment hardware is scheduled to launch from the Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan to the International Space Station at 5:33 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
Live coverage of the launch and capture will air on NASA Television and the agency’s website. More(Source: SpaceCoastDaily.com - Sep 8)

UNPILOTED SOYUZ CAPSULE RETURNS TO EARTH WITH HUMANOID ROBOT ON BOARD - An uncrewed Russian Soyuz spacecraft returned to Earth Friday (Sept. 6), bringing a humanoid robot home and wrapping up a first-of-its-kind test flight to the International Space Station.
The Soyuz MS-14 space capsule landed at 5:32 p.m. EDT (2132 GMT) Friday on the steppes of south-central Kazakhstan, where the local time was 3:32 a.m. EDT on Saturday. Sitting inside the spacecraft was no human crew. Instead, the Soyuz carried the humanoid robot Skybot F-850 and other Russian spaceflight gear. More(Source: Space.com - Sep 8)

IT’S OFFICIAL: THE SEPTEMBER 25 UAE MISSION TO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION IS A GO - Moscow: It’s officially a go for ‘UAE Mission 1’.
The Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC) in Star City, Russia on Thursday morning gave the green light for the September 25 mission that will take the UAE’s first Emirati astronaut Hazza Al Mansoori to the International Space Station (ISS).
More(Source: Gulf News - Sep 6)

RASPBERRY PI STRAPPED TO A SATELLITE TAKES STUNNING PICTURE OF EARTH - A satellite company in the UK, SSTL, has sent a £50 (around $60/AU$90) Raspberry Pi Zero mini PC into space, where it has taken a stunning picture of the planet Earth.
SSTL attached the Raspberry Pi Zero to its Demonstration of Technology satellite (DoT-1), and the only modification the company made to the single board educational computer was that it swapped out the standard lens of the connected camera for a fish-eye one. More(Source: TechRadar India - Sep 6)

ASTROCAST RAISES $9.2 MILLION, GROWS TARGET IOT CONSTELLATION SIZE TO 80 SATELLITES - Astrocast has raised an additional 9 million Swiss francs ($9.2 million) to help build and deploy a larger constellation of Internet of Things satellites than the Swiss startup previously envisioned.
The Series A financing round announced Sept. 4 brings to 16.6 million Swiss francs what Astrocast has raised since forming in 2014. The company declined to name its investors, saying only that this round included a mix of old and new funders. Early stage venture capital firm Investiere and Airbus Ventures contributed to Astrocast’s seed funding. More(Source: SpaceNews - Sep 5)

RUSSIAN SATELLITE CREEPS UP TO INTELSAT SATELLITE - AGAIN -
A Russian satellite has sidled up to yet another satellite in geostationary orbit, reigniting concerns that it could be stealing data or could cause a collision.
Since launching in September 2014, a Russian satellite known as Luch or Olymp has caused friction in the national security space community as it traverses across geostationary orbit. Geosynchronous satellites are separated into wide segments of space in order to avoid interference with each other, but Russian operators have ignored that setup with Luch, preferring instead to travel through the orbit, creeping up on other commercial and government satellites. More(Source: C4ISRNet - Sep 4)

SPACEX REPORTS A ‘BUG’ IN ITS ALERT SYSTEM AFTER ESA SHIFTS SPACECRAFT TO AVOID STARLINK SATELLITE COLLISION - The European Space Agency says it performed a collision avoidance maneuver over the Labor Day weekend to head off a potential crash between its Aeolus wind-measuring satellite and one of SpaceX’s Starlink broadband data satellites.
In a series of tweets, ESA said Monday’s event marked the first such maneuver taken to avoid an active satellite in what’s expected to become a “mega constellation” of thousands of satellites — and it warned that such maneuvers posed a grave challenge for future orbital traffic management. More(Source: GeekWire - Sep 4)